Saturday (Sep 16) — Ava, 5:45pm [info/tickets] This drama from Iranian-Canadian filmmaker Sadaf Foroughi played the Discovery section of this year’s TIFF to strong notices… this is a director on the way up.

Monday (Sep 18) — Black Cop*, 6:30pm [info/tickets] Nova Scotia’s own Cory Bowles has expanded a short film into a feature that has debuted at TIFF to strong reviews—it is a vital and riveting feature-directorial debut.

Wednesday (Sep 20) — BPM (Beats Per Minute), 6:30pm [info/tickets] This “sprawling, thrilling” AIDS activist drama took the Grand Prix, effectively second prize, at Cannes earlier this year.
— Happy End*, 9:30pm [info/tickets] Some will find Michael Haneke’s shocks no longer so shocking; others, as usual, will find that they go too far. Others, perhaps, like me will appreciate the way the film knits together some of his previous themes (and indeed characters) and admire yet another fine performance from Isabelle Huppert.

Thursday (Sep 21) Call Me By Your Name*, 7:00pm [info/tickets] The combination of Luca Guadagnino’s direction with a James Ivory script makes magic in this coming-of-age 1980s-Italy-set gay romance. Great choice for the closing gala.
— The Florida Project, 9:50pm [info/tickets] An exciting late add to the festival, this drama featuring Willem Dafoe is the follow-up project from Sean Baker, who turned heads in a major way with Tangerine.

The newly rebranded festival in Halifax has also booked Mary Shelley, the new film from Haifaa al-Mansour, director of Wadjda, the first feature film in history to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia. As fascinating as the production story may be, the film itself is a triumph of narrative skill, brilliantly balancing realism and idealism with a young protagonist you won’t soon forget.

Ruben Östlund’s The Square was a surprise winner at Cannes earlier this year, and now it will be making its North American debut at TIFF. His gloriously biting Force Majeure is a little slice of cinematic near-perfection—let’s hope the ill-conceived American remake never actually gets made.

Finally, Hirokazu Kore-eda has a curveball lined up for TIFF audiences this year in the form of crime drama The Third Murder, but 2015’s Our Little Sister is right in Kore-eda’s sweet spot—a carefully drawn Japanese domestic drama, the sort of quietly gripping, insightful film for which you rarely if ever see a North American equivalent.